Australian Rock Star Nick Cave to Boycotters: ‘I Love Israel’

JNS.org – Australian rock star Nick Cave is facing backlash from BDS supporters following a performance in Tel Aviv, where he accused the anti-Israel movement of trying to bully and censor him.

In a statement on Tuesday, former Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters, a leader of the boycott of Israel by performing artists, said he “read Nick Cave’s press conference statements with a mixture of sorrow, rage and disbelief.”

“What if it was your demolished home? Your invaded country? Your villages razed to the ground to build stadiums for the invaders to promote pop concerts on?” Waters said. “Nick thinks this is about censorship of his music? What? Nick, with all due respect, your music is irrelevant to this issue, so is mine, so is Brian Eno’s, so is Beethoven’s….This isn’t about music, it’s about human rights.”

During a press conference prior to his performance on Sunday in Tel Aviv, Cave said he had faced pressure from the BDS movement to cancel his shows in Israel, and that he had been approached by record producer Brian Eno to sign a boycott list. But Cave said he wanted to take a “principled stand against anyone who wants to censor and silence musicians.”

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“On a very intuitive level I did not want to sign that [boycott], there was something that stunk to me about that list,” Cave said.

“So at the end of the day, there are two reasons why I’m here. One is that I love Israel and I love Israeli people, and two is to make a principled stand against anyone who wants to censor and silence musicians. So really, you could say in a way that the BDS made me play Israel,” he said.